Wine Enthusiast: This is a juicy wine, already bursting with fruit and well-integrated tannins. It is a wine with a medium-term future, best enjoyed around 2026.
Wine Spectator: Pure, with a core of cassis and blueberry fruit streaming through, carried by ample yet embedded graphite-edged grip. Keeps a fresh feel through the finish. Lovely.
Decanter: Lovely deep damson colour with violet edging that suggests a healthy pH. Great balance of fruit and acidity, this is one of the fresher wines of the appellation. The fruit is cleanly extracted, fresh and well paced, with a lovely layer of complexity driven by smoke-edged mineral notes. Aged in 50% new oak.
Neal Martin: The 2016 Talbot has a conservative bouquet with slightly leafy black fruit, a subtle earthiness that percolates through with time. At first, the aromatics seem standoffish, but you gradually warm to its charms. The palate is medium-bodied with crisp and tensile tannin. There is an edginess to this Talbot, and it does not quite possess the harmony and charm of other Saint Julien 2016s. But, there is personality here—a bit curmudgeonly and yet you keep going back to take another sip. One to watch.
